I’m gonna unpackage number three for you. Number three is eat consciously. Most people that I know, myself formerly included, would eat completely unconsciously. What do I mean by this? Most people who come into my office think they’re coming to be hypnotized, because I am the hypnotist, right? In actual fact, most of the time I’m de-hypnotizing people, because they’re already in a trance. It’s a pretty shitty trance, that’s limiting your life and causing some kind of suffering.

So protocol number three is eat consciously. It’s turning the unconscious process of eating into a conscious process. Most people that have a problem with eating, emotional eating, with weight, they focus on food all the time, except for when they’re eating. Well, they might be focusing on what they’re gonna eat later or what they’ll do later, but they’re not focusing on the food that’s in their mouth at that time. So it’s taking away the joy from it. So whatever you’re eating, whether it be something healthy or what we’re told is healthy, broccoli, vegetables, whatever. Or whether it’s a piece of cheesecake, whether it’s a Frappuccino, enjoy the hell out of it. Chew it 20 to 30 times, whatever the food is. Put your knife and fork down in between every bite. If it’s a smoothie or it’s a drink, take a sip, mouthful, put it down. Then repeat, 20 to 30 times. But chew the food 20 to 30 times so it becomes that liquid in your mouth.

Always leave a bit of food on the plate. Now, I don’t know if you’re like me and you were brought up by well-meaning parents, but I was brought up by well-meaning parents that tried to put me in the Clean Plate Club. What’s the Clean Plate Club? It goes a bit like this. It’s a seed or a suggestion that’s planted from a very early age, where it’s like, “Oh, you got to eat all your food on your plate so you can grow up and be big and strong.” Or “You got to eat food on your plate so the kids in Africa are not gonna die ‘cause they’re starving.” I had all this growing up, and most of my clients have had it, and by well-meaning parents or guardians most of the time. And really what that is, is a suggestion that they’re putting in our head, or a seed at a very young age, where it’s not okay to leave food on our plate. Because I won’t grow up and be big and strong, or someone’s gonna die in another country that you’ve never met before. There’s no evidence to prove this, but we’re told from a kid and we forget about that suggestion and we operate it, hence why a lot of people have this necessity to eat all the food on their plate, even though they started to feel satisfied about half way into the plate.

So all still part of number three, protocol number three, eating consciously. Leave some food on the plate. What does that mean? Does that mean you have to waste it and throw it away? No, you can eat it later when you’re hungry. You can give it to your animal, to your dog, probably not the cat if she’s a bit fat. Oh no, she’s okay. She’ll bite me later to tell me off, you see? Or you give it to a loved one or something, but just leave a bit of food on the plate, because what you’re doing is you’re training your unconscious mind, the bit we’re working with, the bit that controls all this emotional eating anyways. It’s okay for me to leave some food on the plate and nothing bad happens. My mum and dad don’t call me up as an add-on and be like, “Oh I just saw on your video that you left food on your plate. I’m gonna come by and ground you for a week.” No. No one cares, you’re the only one that’s keeping score. So leave some food on the plate.

If it’s appropriate, close your eyes when you eat. What does that do? Science has shown us in studies that people who close their eyes when it’s appropriate, when it’s safe, when you eat tend to eat about 50% less simply by closing their eyes, because most people when it comes to overeating have a very visual strategy. So what you do is you take out the visual cortex once you know what your food is, and you just become gustatory, and it’s focused on that sense of taste or olfactory smell. It knocks out the main sense, and people tend to find they eat far less when they close their eyes.

Here’s the most important one, in number three, and that is when you eat, eat consciously. Close your book. Turn off the internet. Put down your cell phone. Close the tablet. Turn off the TV. Turn off the loud crazy music that you crazy kids listen to, and just be present, just be mindful, just be in the now when you’re eating. It has a very powerful effect. If you’re gonna eat, whatever you’re gonna eat, at least be mindful, be present, meditate on that food and enjoy the hell out of it with no distractions.

Here’s an interesting thing. 40, 50 years ago, the average meal would take a minimum 20 minutes to eat, sometimes 30, 40 minutes to eat a meal that was probably a lot less than we’re eating now. Now we scarf down all this food rather rapidly, because we’re multitasking. We’re updating our Facebook, we’re replying to that text, we’re going on the OK Cupid and seeing if we’ve got any love matches. We’re doing all those things all the time, and that food that probably would have taken us 20 to 40 minutes 50 years ago, to eat less of this food, now we eat in five minutes because we’re always in a rush, being pulled, distracted in multiple directions. So stop it. Stop the sound. Stop the nonsense. When you eat, that’s all you do. And enjoy the hell out of it. It’s all right to eat, so you better well frigging enjoy it when you do it. So switch off all the distractions.